


bent.

by brucewaynery



Series: happy steve bingo fills [1]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Steve Bingo, Insecure Tony Stark, M/M, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 07:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20775002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: He sees it, the Ring, when he gets to Brooklyn, in the window of a pawn shop, displayed amongst many. It's perfect.For someone who doesn't want to be with him anymore.WINDOW SHOPPING





	bent.

“We should stop seeing each other.”

Steve stills, still half asleep. He snatches back the hand that had been around Tony’s waist and sits up.

“Any reason?” He asks casually, as though his entire world isn’t shattering right in front of him. And isn’t that a scary thought? In mere months Tony had gained the ability to utterly destroy him in six small words, and Steve had thought, naively, he supposes, in retrospect, that he just wouldn’t. Presumed, really, taken for granted, more accurately. 

Because couples choose to break up or stay together, day after day, and some take the latter for the rest of their lives, Steve never, not even if it would save his own life, chose to break up, the love he had for Tony felt strong enough to power their relationship over the multiverse, for thousands of generations, and up ‘til now, he’d always thought that Tony, brilliant, bright, incredible, far too good for this earth, Tony would choose him, naively, stupidly, idiotically.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Tony says, with his back to Steve. He realises belatedly that he should be getting dressed. Should be leaving.

But he can’t stop himself from pleading, any facade of casual falling away, “Then don’t. Don’t-don’t break up--”

“I have to,” Tony insists, “we have to.”

“Do you not like me anymore?”

There’s a pause, barely milliseconds, barely long enough for a breath, but it may as well have been another century. And the resounding silence is answer enough.

His world goes from shattering, suspended in question, reversible, to shattered, scattered on the floor, a dying man’s breath away from floating away.

So he goes. Like he should’ve five minutes. He leaves the Tower, but even in the dark, pre-dawn streets of Manhattan, everything he sees reminds him of Tony. The worst part is that even though he knows, with startling clarity, that Tony doesn’t love him, _never did_ and that Tony hurt him, he can’t help but think good of him, Tony in the morning, soft and pliant, in the evening, loving and gentle, so, so unrepentingly bright all the time.

He walks and walks and walks, no real destination. He doesn’t get stopped, the low cap and hoodie disguise hadn’t failed him yet.

He realises he’s in Brooklyn, a stone’s throw from where he used to live, when he walks past a pawn shop with the borough emblazoned in bronze on black in that Old English font. He doesn’t think much of it, nothing past recognising that he should probably head <strike>home</strike> back and deal with the aftermath. He indulges himself in the very real reality of the fact that he’s going to have to resign from the Avengers as he spins on his heel.

That’s when he sees it. A ring, simple, practical, gorgeous. Never worn, a size 9, with an engraving thrown in, on the house.

He tamps down the irrational desire to buy it (who does he have to give it to?) and sprints back to the Tower.

“Where the hell were you?” Tony asks as soon as he gets to the kitchen. Steve hates how perfectly fine he looks. He hates even more how much seeing him makes him want to run all the way back to that shop and fall on his knees.

“Do you care?”

Tony seems taken aback at that. “We were friends before we started any of this, of course I care,” he says, softly, “you didn’t take your phone.”

“...Thank you for your concern.”

Steve drinks a protein shake and walks back to the shop.

He stands outside it long enough that the owner, an elderly gentleman, tells him to buy something or stop scaring off the potential customers. Considering the fact that it’s almost closing time, and the sun is setting, he doubts he was really hurting business, but he leaves anyway, making another promise with himself to just let it go.

He breaks it four times in two days. 

When he’s not walking, he’s in the gym, or at SHIELD, or on his old floor. Anywhere without Tony. Not that that stops him from thinking about him. Or wondering where he went wrong.

He thinks back, on his fifth walk back from the shop, over the happiest months of his life, and takes every single second he spent with Tony, all in excruciating detail, and scrubs through every frame, for any time where he failed him, every time where he wasn’t good enough, every time he could have, _should_ have been better.

On that day, he destroys so much gym equipment that JARVIS kicks him out of the gym. 

He adds that to the list of why he failed, and seems to still be failing, Tony.

He doesn’t see him at all, Tony doesn’t seek him out (why would he?) but he still misses him, so goddamn fiercely. He’s never thought that he’d ever live in a world where he didn’t have Tony in his life somehow.

He realises now, that’s awfully codependent, and another thing to add to the list.

They don’t tell the team, or maybe Tony did, he’s not too sure, because they never told the team that they were together in the first place (+1 list) but he’s pretty sure that they all knew anyway. Nothing changes, either way, not really, they’re still planning movie nights and training sessions (the latter, Tony only comes to when Steve’s not there. Which hurts, but Steve gets. He does. He swears.).

On the third day, the ring is gone.

The walk to get there was cold, which shouldn’t have been a surprise in the slightest, what with the Christmas songs sneaking in on the radio and the trees and lights going up in the shops, but it barely crosses his mind until he’s halfway across Williamsburg Bridge and by that point, there isn’t any need to go back.

He wishes he never met Tony, he wishes, for such a short moment that it’s almost as though he imagined it, that he never fell in love with him, because in some long, twisted way, he’s the reason that he’s three hours away from home, and cold.

He feels offended, almost, that the ring is gone, but that falls away the second he realises that ultimately, that’s a good thing, whoever bought it, he hopes them the happiness that he doubts he himself will ever find again. And Steve has no reason to walk all the way to Brooklyn any more.

As soon as he gets back to the Tower, he goes straight for the roof, and rummages around behind a panel until his hand closes around a box and a lighter.

He should stop, he knows that, it causes cancer and lung and heart disease and all the other things he can’t get, but it’s always been relaxing to him, even those asthma cigarettes, which would definitely be so many levels of illegal these days, were relaxing. He’s found that reminiscing is never a good look on him, and, if he had a choice, he wouldn’t go back to the forties, but he likes to indulge in it, every now and then.

Tony never liked it, claimed that it made it horrible to kiss him (“Which should be so illegal, Rogers,” Tony teases, plucking the cigarette out of his fingers and stubbing it out, “because kissing you is something I want to spend my whole life doing.”), so he didn’t do it as much, only when he was out of the country, or on the bad days, and even then, only a couple.

He gets through half a pack before he’s interrupted, long after the sun has left and the stars, only the brightest, and the crescent moon hang in the sky.

“I made a mistake.”

Steve wants to turn around, drop the cigarette, but he stops himself and just hums his agreement, still facing outward, still smoking.

“Steve?”

“Tony.”

He stubs the cigarette and turns around to look at Tony for the first time in almost a week, and everything comes rushing back, full force.

Tony steps closer, but stops, maybe a meter out, much farther than he used to. Distancing himself.

“Steve, I-- I’m sorry, I was dumb, and I was scared, and that’s no excuse for what I said--”

The sirens and sounds of the city fade away until all he can hear and see is Tony, flooding his senses.

“Did-- did you mean it?” Steve’s voice cracks, and he knows that he must look utterly pathetic and needy, but he has to know.

Tony shakes his head before he can get a word out, “No, not, not at all. I-- it, it just, you, you know what I warned you about, when you asked me out, that I’ll do something outrageously stupid and probably try destroy the best thing in my life? Yeah. I, uh, that.”

Tony drops to his knees and there, in his shaky hands, is the ring.

“Take me back?”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!!
> 
> all kudos/comments/reblogs are greatly appreciated!
> 
> [tumblr post](https://au-ti.tumblr.com/post/187947844086/bent)


End file.
